


this new reality

by stellaviatores



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universes, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Dreamscapes, Dreamsharing, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Pining, Pre-Slash, Pre-Star Trek Beyond, Telepathy, Universal constants, Vulcan Mind Melds, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 09:12:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11288217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellaviatores/pseuds/stellaviatores
Summary: Spock receives council in his sleep.





	this new reality

**Author's Note:**

> title from kiri tse's [twenty something](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvr-hoP3Tk0)

When Spock dreams, the sky is red. The Vulcan winter, hardly considered a winter by human standards, left the horizon in shades of rust after the sun’s zenith. Soon the stars would poke through, pinpricks of light stabbed into a rich dark blanket. Like so many of his people, Spock found comfort in watching the day around him begin to unravel, power down, lose steam and come to rest under the watchful eyes of the galaxy.

 

He remembers Vulcan in these minutes before sunset. He breathes them in and takes solace in what he knows.

 

What he _knew_.

 

He doesn’t dream of his mother.

 

“That is unwise,” says a rusted voice by his left. Looking down from the stars, Spock meets his alternate’s clouded eyes and inclines his head.

 

“I do not understand.”

 

Ambassador Spock’s lips twitch. “I did not expect you too. Please, sit.” He groans as he lowers himself to sit on the gorges’ edge, wizen features betraying more than a touch of arthritis. When Spock is settled beside him, the Ambassador offers the ta’al. Spock reciprocates automatically.

 

“You are troubled.”

 

“What draws you to that conclusion?”

 

“Your presence in my unconscious mind. And,” Spock mutters, “you appear - concerned.”

 

The Ambassador, as he is wont to do in his younger counterpart’s presence, allows a small laugh. Spock grits his teeth. “Correct on both counts. As it were, I was never able to keep the truth from myself.” He stares at the tense line of Spock’s jaw, his gaze hardened on the unsinking sun - a familiar expression, though he hasn’t seen it on his own face in some time. Perhaps others saw him like this in the years before gaining commission on the _Enterprise_. Perhaps this was what he looked like before Jim.

 

Spock catches the tail end of his elder’s thought and flinches. “I implore you to leave me in peace,” he growls.

 

“Spock -”

 

“Leave me,” he snaps, turning to the Ambassador with barely tempered flint in his glare. “This is not your place.”

 

“Oh, Spock,” his alternate muses, “this has always been my place.”

 

“Your statement means nothing. Leave me.”

 

Instead the Ambassador leans back on his outstretched hands, the picture of nonchalance as he reclines on the barren cliff’s edge. Spock hands, already clenched in fists, tighten. “ _The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven_.”

 

“Milton.”

 

“Correct again.”

 

There were no birds in Spock’s dreams, none of the indigenous wildlife of Vulcan to cushion his illusion, but he wishes for a simple songbird to cut through his counterpart’s voice. This is his dream, he should be able to conjure some deus ex machina to banish the elder Spock, and yet -

 

And yet, he releases his fists and allows himself the very human betrayal of sighing.

 

“Please,” he implores, “tell me of your purpose here.”

 

“I cannot simply visit you for a recreational discussion?”

 

“We have established you are troubled. There is no reason to lie to me.”

 

“Not lying - distracting. Delaying.”

 

Spock tilts his head. “Procrastinating?”

 

“No more than you are,” the Ambassador says. He rearranges himself, joints creaking, so that his legs are crossed in the traditional meditative position. His fingers settle themselves in the well-worn stance, index and middle appendages just touching. “It troubles me that you are not allowing yourself the pleasure of Jim’s companionship,” he finally posits.

 

Of course that was why. They had spoken of many things in the years the Ambassador had been present in Spock’s universe, but his - their - Captain was most frequently cited. The elder Spock found no end to his praise of his James Kirk, his adoration bordering on obscene. When Spock asked if they were t’hy’la, he was not surprised by the answer.

 

But he was surprised by the squeeze on his heart.

 

“Do not mistake my concern for misplaced romanticism, Spock.” The elder fixes him with a stern frown like a mother chiding her child for wandering into the unknown. “I have seen many universes and in every one we inhabit, you and he are a balanced equation,  _k’diwa._ He is your constant. Scatter his atoms from yours and they will find their way back to you. Of this I am certain.”

 

Spock weakly shakes his head. “Few things in any universe are truly certain,” he protests.

 

The Ambassador smiles. “But Jim Kirk is one of them.”

 

“Why did you come here?” Spock repeats, an edge of pleading to his voice. “Are you content to taunt me with lives I cannot live? Does it give you pleasure to draw comparison to yourself, or the thousands of other versions of us that have experienced the same? Did you come here to _mock_ me?”

 

Spock’s dreams are always silent, but rarely are they as quiet as this. There is no wind. Time, suspended, aches with the pressure in his chest. The world narrows to the unsteady beat of his heart and the feeling of grit under his fingertips, grit in his eyes, grit in his throat. The gorge is so dry and he, a leaking sponge, is threatening to douse the desert in a hurricane.

 

The hush carries. Ambassador Spock stands.

 

“Spock -”

 

“No. Leave me.”

 

At long last, the Ambassador does. The sky above Spock grows muted and black and it is here he stays, eyes trained to stars that will not exist in his sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://mutantmeme.tumblr.com)


End file.
